January 2008

SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE

"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"

28 January, 2008: Lyndon Johnson Number 1! The First CQC Level 10

This last week in The annual Sacramento, CA. Combat Camp, I had the pleasure of appointing a North Carolinian, one Lyndon Johnson as the very first (in 12 years) Level 10 CQC "Black Belt." As many know, we allow mature teen agers to attend these seminars and thats when Johnson began coming to see me in the 1990s. His mother and grandmother would come with him and sit and wait outside the seminars! It was always such a pleasure to see them.

He has methodically trained and studied for each rank and each course through the years, chipping away at the 40 segments of the 10 level, hand, stick, knife and gun courses. Affectionately called "Mr. President," he's hosted me in N.C. and chased me around the country attending seminars, each time with a mission to complete this or that rank. During these years he has been on a SWAT team and completed a registered nurse, medical program, also making him a tactical EMT.

Last October, 2007, he attended the 3-day Gun/Counter-Gun seminar in Ohio and finished off his gun course requirements. But, he could not get any CQC rank unless he attends a CQC Group camp. Thus - Sacramento, CA. 40 segments in 4, ten-level courses. Hand, stick, knife, gun. He is one of the most focused, driven people I know. Congratulations to Lyndon, "Mr. President" Johnson!

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20-27 January, 2008: Nightmare Near Elm Street

"Armed Robbery. White male. Armed with a handgun."

The address followed. A convenience store on the Interstate. Usually means a high speed getaway with a car, but not always. Not always. And not this time. I was one exit south and the store was just out of my assigned jurisdiction. But I was near. Plus, I was the only available patrol car. It was a weekday night as I best recall, yet a very busy night shift and the others were assigned their own little mandatory nightmares. The dispatcher sent me and I was already in route anyway. Not too often you get this close to a fresh robbery. Still, by the time a victim gets free to call the police, the dispatcher answers, the dispatcher radios you, and you actually get there, precious minutes tick off.

“White male. Short hair, light-colored shirt...”

I turned on the interstate service road and floored the gas pedal. No red lights. No siren, as I wanted to get there as fast and as quiet as possible. To my left, the four-lane interstate highway. To my right, open fields, some trees, tall weeds, switchgrass, a horse ranch, a roll to the land. Beyond, were older wooden homes on south Elm Street, way off in the distance. This was the 1970s. Today, the area is packed with buildings, apartments, houses and businesses. What was once the outskirts of town, now in the 21st century is just like downtown.

As I crested the hill that led to a full view of the store and the intersection off in the distance, WHAT? A white male! Before me? This is what I saw. A glimpse really. A second. A white male running up the service road toward me, tight to the brush of the field to his left. Short hair. White? Gray? Hands-couldn’t discern them. He had to be over 40 years old. Maybe 50? 5 foot, ten inches? Short sleeve pullover shirt. Muscular. Pants of some kind...then he’s gone! Gone. He took one look at me, and ducked into this field! I don't recall a shocked expression. Was this a ghost? I slammed on my brakes. I could see the store down the road. Was there someone bleeding and dying in there? Was this the robbery suspect I just saw? On foot? Running away? What should I do? Proceed to the store as standard operating procedure dictates. No, I had to chase this guy.

“Dispatcher, I got a white male that dove into the brush and he may be the robbery suspect. I will be in the field south of the store. Older white,” I babbled the description and vague location into the car radio mike. Obviously I needed help, but there was no help available. Worse, back in the day? The 1970s? A shortage of hand held radios! I had none.

I grabbed my flashlight, pulled out my Colt Python .357 magnum and ran in the field, thereabouts to where I saw this guy dive. I could not hear or see all that well. There was some ambient light. The highway behind me was full of steady traffic casting off the fleeting “sides” of headlights. Some distant, tall, gas station tower lights were all around, offering some glow. The whole place was varying shades of gray and shifting about in a slight breeze. The semi-trucks and cars also laid a roaring hum to the landscape, especially the trucks. The tall grass and wild weeds ranged from heights of 3 feet to 5 feet or so and the roll to the land made it taller and shorter in spots. I could barely hear myself scrape through the brush, which at times I had to part like I was swimming, light in one hand, gun on the other. There were plenty of places for an armed man to hide and ambush and all-in-all, it was a real life nightmare situation. And it suddenly got worse.

I got to a higher point and looked around. Nothing suspicious. Where could....Him! Gunshot! Ducked! What?

This guy popped up about 50 or 60 feet from me, a pistol up and fired at me. He popped back down. One second. I instantly ducked and dropped down on one knee below the grass line before I could digest what had really happened in that second. Less than a second?

“That mother-fucker shot at me!” I said to myself, astounded. And I could not see him or anything now this low! I felt the need to drop on my back, and I aimed my pistol up in his last general direction and at the wall of grass before me. Because - what if he was moving in on me? I watched and listened, waiting for a figure to peel through the tall grass or appear above the grass, hunting me. This was the man I saw duck into this field. That time I saw him from belt- line high. He was maybe 50 years old and clean cut. Muscular and trim. I realized in a few seconds he wasn't charging me and this prone position wasn't going to work for a host of reasons. I got back up to one knee. I looked back down the slope and saw my squad car parked on the service road. Still no help. No sense running back down to report in. This guy would get away.

I took steps to the left and with my gun up, I popped up tall myself, my gun up, and scanned the grounds and then got low and moved off. No more Sunday stroll and noisy breaststroke through this place! I circled the direction I thought a fleeing man might choose to escape, which was the far east of the field, Elm Street and the horse ranch. With each step I got further from the lights and roar of the interstate. I was in a crouched walk and sometimes low jog. I had chased armed men from time-to-time through the woods before and it always sucks. This one felt different. My alert system was on turned on full, full, full. This was lonely, scary shit! And I was ready to shoot at ANYTHING.

Bang! Him!
BANG! Me!

There he was again! He stood, shot and ducked and I shot back reflexively. No aim, just shot. One hand grip. No time to aim and I meant to let this guy know not to charge me while shooting at me because I would pull the trigger on his ass. He was about 50 feet away this time? Maybe 60, and a bit closer to the horse ranch. “SHIT!” I cussed under my breath. I mean to say that this guy actually looked like a classic, pop-up target that flipped forward and back before you could shoot at it!

I bolted off from the spot and peeked up again. Nothing. No sound. No bad guy. Just the wind whipping through the tall grass. The leaves rustling in sporadic trees. All in an area as big as three football fields, or more. Distant lights. Distant traffic. Distant help. This was a cat and mouse game and I couldn’t tell you who was the cat, or who was the mouse!

Two. He'd shot twice.
I continued the circle toward the dim lights of South Elm street.
No one ever taught me to count bullets in any of the police academies I had attended. In fact, there was talk to the contrary, about NOT counting bullets because it would be a distraction. Many said you can't anyway. But I still learned it as a kid watching westerns. Its all situational. In a prolonged encounter like this, you had time to think about running a tab. Surely he had a wheel gun with six bullets. The gun flash there in the dark was larger than an enclosed semi-auto style and the bang was bigger than one of those little, Saturday Night Specials. Armed robbers usually do not bring speed-loaders but, that word “usually” was the one that tripped me up here. Usually. We had caught robbers with loose rounds in their pockets.

It is hard to run in the dark, on rough terrain, in a poster-boy, classroom, two-hand pistol grip, and hold a one-foot long, baton-sized flashlight. Heading towards my 12 o'clock in a 10 o'clock-ish direction and worried about the suspect to my 2, 3 or 4 o'clock, I had a lot to look at and think about. If I concentrated on where I thought the robber was, in the classic, pistol-range prescribed, two-hand grip? I'd fall over something in about ten seconds. Here in the dark, you can't focus on your sights and even spot the bad guy in the landscape this way! In real life, you have to let all that class room stuff go. Let it go and just point, shoot and run! I ran as low as could - crouched over - combat run.

I dreamed of just shooting the horizon. You know, filling it full of lead. I had five bullets in my gun, a speed loader and 12 bullets in loops on my belt. I could blind, “field of fire” his ass and hope for the best. But I wasn't in the Tet Offensive here. This wasn't the Army. I couldn't. I was still the “good guy,”out here, relentlessly brainwashed about when exactly/precisely to shoot and when not to shoot. He, on the other hand wasn't so brainwashed and would shoot me in the back. But, I reminded myself that while this wasn't Tet? It wasn't Times Square on New Years Eve either and this shit is about to go all rodeo as the Elm street backyards were fast approaching. When this went red again, I decided I was going to shoot a whole lot. DAMN! Why didn't I bring that shotgun with me from the car! That baby was right in the front seat behind my ankles when I bailed out of the squad!

Red it did! BANG! He did it again! From my right side. about 4 o'clock and quite a ways a way. I shot back where I saw the flash, but low because he ducked. BANG! BANG! BANG! I shot at nothing, nothing three times, but where I thought he was. One in the center, one to right of it, one to the left. I stayed standing straight up. I held the high ground now! The tall view. Looked, looked, looked. Gun up. Looked. Walked in.

I really thought for a moment I dropped him. There were no escape sounds from the brush. No moaning. Wounded people may writh in agony. Or not. I can't say if I did or didn't shout something out about surrender, or give up. I migth have? I slowly, stepped forward, scanning everything, hoping I'd soon see a dead mother-fucker robber, right where I'd shot. But, what if I'd clipped him and he laid back on the ground, like I had laid moments before. Laid in waiting for me stalk in?

Two bullets, Two bullets. Two bullets, Two bullets. I have two bullets in this gun. I stopped, shoved my flashlight into my right armpit, got out my speed loader, ejected six out from the cylinder, dropped six in the gun (now THAT was important, classic range practice!) He's got three. I've got six. Gun up. Moved forward. Looking up and down and all around, but really hoping soon to see a dead guy where I'd just shot. I'd settle for near-dead. The rest can be arranged.

I looked down expecting to see my prey.

Nothing. For the first time this night I put my flashlight on and scanned the ground. Body? Blood? Nothing. He was gone, or I was wrong? Distance can be deceiving, so I advanced more trying to second and third guess a downed enemy. Nothing! Damn. I crouched a bit more now and looked toward the horse ranch. I had no choice but to keep moving towards the fence line. I stepped my way northeast, doing my best to look all around and stay low and get ready to duck and shoot.

A man! A man walked, upright off the distance at my 5 o'clock. My eyes scoped in on his grayish/black silhouette. I also noticed in the backdrop behind him, wisps of the rotating red lights of a squad car on some trees and the sides of passing trucks. It was my back up. It was my sergeant Dusty Mallard! And, he was walking across this kill zone like a stroll in the park. His car was back on the service road by mine. And, he had no idea we'd busted a few caps out here already.

Damn it all again! My head swiveled back and forth. He'll be shot! He'll be shot for sure walking like that! I took off as fast and as low as I could in his direction. I threw caution to the wind and breeze of the night.

“Hey, hey, Sarge!” I said in a quick, half- shout, and Dusty looked at me. I was waving my hand for him to bend low. He saw me and turned in my direction. I pumped my hand dramatically, palm down, rabidly. We met halfway. I was on one knee and he leaned over, a palm on his knee.

“Get down, Sarge!” I said. “This guy has shot at me!”

“Shot at you?"

“Yeah. Get down!” He leaned over a bit further and I told him what had happened. He listened as he scanned the grassland. In my opinion he was not low enough. It would probably take one round to whip and crackle over his head before he re-defined the word “low.” We decided to spread out and head for Elm Street. The good news was that Dusty, being the patrol shift supervisor, had a portable radio and he asked for a unit to check out Elm Street. The bad news is a fugitive could easily spot and hide from a trolling patrol car on any street, least of all a rural one like Elm. A half-a-hundred places to hide.

With me doubling back to intercept Dusty, we had lost precious minutes by now. If a dedicated fugitive saw all this maneuvering over this geography, as slick and cool as this one, he could turn this into quite a lead. I jogged and Dusty walked north east until we hit the barbwire fences of the Elm back yards and the neighboring horse ranch. Through the houses, I saw not one but two squad cars, headlights off, creeping down the street. If I saw them? He saw them too, but If he shot at us now? He could be quickly surrounded because the cavalry was here and would hear it. I walked the perimeter of the fence north and Dusty went south. We finally both put our flashlights on and blatantly spotlighted the back of houses, porches and driveways. Did I say a half-a-hundred places to hide? Try a million.

Dusty and I met up after about 30 minutes or so and walked back to our cars on the service road. I stopped at the convenience store to check in with the patrolman who eventually responded for the report. The clerk recalled that the suspect was a white male in a ski mask, displayed a large revolver, and wore the short sleeve shirt I saw in flashes. I added my report to the incident, then got back in the car and made multiple circles of the area, up and down Elm Street, up and down the service roads. A professional criminal knows how to hide and wait, with a patience that lasts beyond work shifts. Many professional criminals know when patrol shifts change and commit crimes accordingly. I drove back to area. I parked in the dark. . I watched. I drove. I took a call. I returned. meanwhile, a detective was called out to the scene.

At 11 pm, we changed shifts and the midnight shift was made aware of the mess in their briefing. Next, the day shift would know. When I returned to work the next afternoon, there was still no arrest made. I can only assume the detectives walked the field in daylight looking for any evidence like the ski mask - if the guy ever dropped it?

I thought a bit about this bad guy. Still do on occasion when, for whatever reason I am reminded of him. Just who was this guy? A muscled-up, ex-con that worked out in the prison gym? A two-time loser facing the big bitch - life - if I caught him? Was he passing through and needed quick travel money? Where was his getaway car? Why did he run so far up the service road from the store? Well, all questions unanswered. I also wonder where all of our bullets eventually landed? A few shots fired in the dark one night. Gone. Zipped away to who knows where?

Shots fired. You hear that term a lot in and around police work. Hear about "shots fired" on the news. And we have come so cavalier about it, unless you are there receiving or doing the actual shots. Then the term has a whole deeper meaning and drama for you. They are not the empty words of a newsman, but rather they tend to cause a little rub here and there, a friction, like a slow scratch on some matchstick in your esophagus, or heart, or head? Friction somewhere, as everyone's matchbook is just a little different.

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These Training Mission Themes bring all the nuts and bolts of the essence of combat together into the mixed weapons world of hand, stick, knife and gun.

Multiple Opponents Set Click here

Elbow Hyper-Extension Series Set Click here

Arm Wrap Traps Set Click here

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18 January, 2008: The Show Biz of the Gun Show Biz

An open weekend around the Christmas holiday, I took a trip to the Dallas Market Hall gun show. I made my routine pass by all the tables and in all the years I have either displayed or attended this one and others, still most of the stuff is about the same. Maybe even a little less, but there are some differences and I would like to mention them here.

Ye' ol' The gun show. The idea has fallen in decline over the last two decades. Gun laws and waiting periods put a real damper on the core of the gun show event. Who wants to buy a pistol in Dallas from an El Paso gun store display table and wait, wait, wait? Then have it mailed?

I use to set up tables at these regional gun shows and the like. The most I have heard is a general rumble from displayers about little-or-no sales, and the cheap, "tire-kickers" walking by. I can attest to this. I “are” one.

And now there are just too many gun shows! I realized this back in Las Vegas years ago. Tom Barnhart and I set up shop at the Soldier of Fortune annual “gun-show-style” event at the Vegas Convention center in the 1990s. SOF Magazine was on a serious decline back then (revitalized since only by 9-11). This event was to be their last one, but no one really knew it at the time. Barnhart immediately said SOF stood for in “Search Of Food” since most everyone there were giants and carrying chili hot dogs and cokes.

Other than hanging out with Rex Applegate and SEALs Dick Marchinko and Harry Constance, the event was a bust for us. Attendance was scare and at the very end as I was packing up, three customers ran by, looked at the table and asked,

“will you be back next weekend?”

“Wha?”

“Yeah, the Las Vegas Gun Show is here next weekend!”

Next weekend? A major gun show next weekend? Right here. No wonder attendance was bad. No urgency, just a rolling number of gun shows passing through. Miss this one? Go next weekend. It was then I learned that in parts of, if not most of the USA nation, there are just too many damn, gun shows! I think the gun show hosts make most of their money tricking displayers to come and rent tables. But, the more shows? The way-less customers. I think the SHOT show will possible go the way of this if they are not careful, and I need a No-Doze pill to attend the Blade shows. Is it just me, or are there too many kinds of knives? All of them said to be perfect? (Two weeks ago I had another knife maker ask me to design a “Hock folding knife.” I had to tell the gentleman as I told the others, that I had no earthly idea what to draw up. It would probably look like a $49.95 Spiderco.) So too, shall all these regional police expos and trexpos falter. I know of several that have tried to spring up and can't even get off the ground.

But one new observation I have, since roaming the familiar lanes of gun show traffic? Lots of gun ranges are getting display tables. Lots of them. These days, probably every city in America has some local gun gurus teaching shooting. I think 10 to 15 of them pop up new on the scene a month. Now a few of these guys are studs fresh from combat, which also means grads of the latest urban combat schools and real-deal training methods. Frankly, some of these new studs push many familiar, old market-place faces down into the dust. Who is going to train with a no-experience, paper target shooter, like good ol' “Andy Standodge” when nearby, you also have a retired Staff Sergeant "Kabul" Sammy Stone - with an over 40-kill ratio in urban combat and is also a grad of 6 such special schools? Frankly, I'm driving over to Sergeant Stone's range on gun day! Aren't you? So, there is a paradigm shift in play.

Gun Range Show Biz. Back on the swing of this subject, lets talk about all these new and old gun ranges passing themselves off as ultimate combat, gun survival schools. Most of these ranges are not run by such battle-scarred studs, yet I took note of how everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, the new AND the old, somehow teach “the military, the police and civilians.” It is all over their banners, their fliers and business cards. suggesting they have a backlog of military and police units waiting to get in. It is so easy to make this blanket claim. Or, to dream up a list of crackerjack milspec and DHS courses titles, but actually have no written outlines for any of them. No need, as no one will contract them to teach anyway. It's a shallow, ad pitch. Show and Blow biz.

These claims are not new to the martial industry. I recall a time when every karate school in America had to lie or scam a way into saying they taught at least one Navy SEAL, like the Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon game. "A Navy SEAL drove by here one day and noted my karate was perfect for spec ops military training." (Now there's an ad term you hear a lot today. Spec Ops.)

Shallow, but how transparent? I mean, look at all the webpages on the net. For one example, I know of a little po-dunk, wannabe combatives school in east Texas, made up of chubby, no-ones, with no experience from nowhere. But, by the clever use of actual, military photos and a nice web-design that any 14-year-old can conjure up these days, this school looks like they are a secret training camp for the Green Berets.

I find it all so disingenuous but I wonder if the customers aren't smarter these days than I give them credit for? Are customers smart enough to figure all this out? In the end, I think so, I think there is a general caution and awareness about the show and blow ads, banners and Internet, inertly brewing in all of us. Meanwhile, all of us are drowning in this, this…farce / bullshit.

Anyway I have had my "gun-show fix" for about two years. Maybe three.

Adios Amigos, Hock

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14 January, 2008: Cussen’ at the Wind

Bury my heart at wounded knee. Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie. Bury me way down low where the pine trees go. The promises of death, and subsequent burial. Often, people raise quizzical eyebrows and criticize the burial rites of ancient and even modern peoples. Asians - I remember visiting an old Korean cemetery that housed little rounded, above-ground huts, rather than below-ground resting places. Vikings - fire is popular. Burning in ships. Burning in platforms. In India they use to burn folks alive if the master up and died. Weird. Indians, peoples of the Pacific Ocean Archipelagos, all have their ideas and practices strange to us.

Today, many of us still use cremations and the 6-foot under method. But even after the burials, some modern cultures have trouble leaving the buried alone. Its one thing to visit a grave site regularly, but some modern tribes dig up the bones of their relatives every year and take them to a nice family dinner, then re-bury them. And so on.

We all have a deep drive to survive as both an individual and a race, and are driven to survive, As a result, we just can’t handle death. We dream about it. Obsess about it. We have to make stuff up about it. Its in our DNA to keep going, before and even after death. Death is simply an unpalatable promise

And this includes the tricky passage from one to the other. The rituals of the freshly dead. Funeral homes know to how to keep that freshly-dead-look and how important that is. It seems each culture, small or large, have burial rituals that have have evolved unique to themselves, but with a general premise of “life is precious.” “Hate to see you go.” “There oughta’ be some words said.”

But in the big picture, if you can stand so tall, aren’t all the old and even modern rituals sort of...odd? Really? My guess (and experts) is that the rituals exist for the living, not the dead, to facilitate the passing of friends and loved ones. Ways to wrap their heads around it and that can be important for mental health of the living. The dead is after all, deader-than-hell and need no adjustment steps. So, I won't be around to orchestrate the festivities. But if you must know? I would rather you go to a gym and work out, or get drunk in a bar, than to pissant about dressed in black at some funeral home, or God help me, a...church (oh, a thousand times no!). The choice is a gym or a bar (or something similar), but never a funeral home or a church. Get that?

After death, many believe they next will be zip-drived right on to various thereafters. Where is this? Pretty much the people around you when you grew up, have defined these particular, thereafter locations. Religion is largely a demographic phenomena. Mostly, you are, where you come from and what you have been molded, scolded and “told-ed” since a toddler’s age. Me? Actually, I'm inclined to believe in the "BIG Sleep," one bigger sleep than Chandler's Big Sleep. I don't know and you don't know. The subject as they say in court, is moot. But its always fun and telling to kick aound.

A religious leader once said there was golf, but no sex in Heaven. Certainly no condoms. Kinky Freidman said if you’re good in life? We all die and go to Willie Nelson’s house. I would love to die and go Vatican Heaven. More precisely just the Vatican. A place lost in time and space, a medieval culture of useless babble, repressed psyches and collection plates. But, surroundings wise? Saddamn Hussein didn’t live and eat this well. Starving children in Africa? Screw that and pass the prime rib, baby! I’ll have the Pope’s Special. (How we started out with Jesus and ended up with a Pope, is a study of the human race if given enough rope. And I promise I would haunt the child molesters to death. Just don’t make me wear one of those tall, party hats. Do Mormons get entire planets? Maybe Mitt Romney will someday explain. No telling what the Scientologists believe but might it have something to do with John Travolta at a pearly gate transporter with a ray gun? So many Heavens. So little time.

Military units promise to each other that they will never leave a man or body behind. A solemn oath. In Hunting the Jackal, Billy Waugh says:

"There's a code in Special Forces that I need to make clear. If you die, we're going to get you out. We do not leave wounded or dead men behind for the enemy to gloat over, stake out, or other such bullshit. We leave no man behind. It's as simple as that. If it costs the lives of fifty men in an attempt to get you out, we're still going to send the 51 st in there to retrieve all or part of your body."

Me? I find this confusing too. I would never want any my friends to become injured or die, trying to get my dead body back to America. If you really care about me? Please, please don’t let anyone else being hurt or killed to haul my carcass back from somewhere. Hey man, its a carcass. I’m gone, bubba. Gone. Bye! That ol’ bag of skin? Let it be. Concentrate all that fervor insread on killing the bad guys. I also find it oddly appealing and ironic to rot away on some foreign soil for a proper cause. I would be fine with that, if indeed that happened.

I have had a few arch enemies in my day, most still in prison, and they have promised to piss on my grave. I kind of like the idea of not having one anywhere physically piss-able, which the cremation option does solve. I’d like to think of these morons pissing in the wind to catch up to me and having their wretched urine stain their own pants and shoes. They would cuss at the wind, and then I would know my work here is done.

Adios Amigos, Hock

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11 January, 2008: The First Day - A New Jersey Yankee in Judqe Roy Bean's Court

Have you ever heard the true story about the rookie policeman who, on his first day, discovered his family followed him in their car to "watch him work"? How about the one where the rookie was flipped the squad car keys for the first time by his training officer and when slamming the car door behind him, caught and broke his thumb? Off to the emergency room! Day One! Then there was the first-day rookie who shot the mirror in the men's room practicing his quick draw.

Or, how about the very first night one of my friends started work in my old police department?. Kind of of a country boy, he was hired into our bigger city, a place big, strange and new to him. On his first night, he climbed into the passenger side of the squad car of an unfriendly, non- talkative, older, cranky, training officer. My friend was scared to death of him. His very job hinged on the eventual opinion and evaluation of this grunting, training officer. That whole thing. In the first twenty, silent minutes, this vet spotted a drunk driver while trolling in our version of the unfriendly “projects."

The traffic stop was fast and furious as one might expect in the late 1960s and the driver was quickly cuffed. Towing the suspect’s car into the city pound was a time consuming hassle, as you, or a partner, or another squad had to wait and meet the tow truck at the scene. Then follow the wrecker to the pound. Then unlock the pound and drop the car off. Then deliver the car keys to the police station and fill out...more paperwork about the car. Back In the 1960s and 1970s we would often just drive the suspect car ourselves right onto the police department, parking lot! This would save the drunk (or any suspect) some towing and pound fees, and we would use that as a bargaining chip to get suspects to cooperate with us. Talk, smile and save impound fees! Of course that whole policy has changed now. (I wouldn't be surprised if the cities today didn't tune up and fix the cars they impound now. Like inmate's teeth. Don't laugh it is probably coming soon. Maybe to San Francisco first. It'll start with fixing the exhaust to "save the air." Next, increase fuel efficiency. Before you know it a burglar will bond out and have a great getaway car waiting!)

Well, this cranky veteran officer decided he was going to drive the suspect vehicle and the handcuffed suspect straight to the station to save time. My rookie friend stood nearby and the vet suddenly tossed him the squad car keys, with a command,

“Here kid, follow us in.”

Then the vet jumped in the car, and drove off. Disappeared would be a better word. My rookie friend dashed to the squad car. His first assignment! He stuck the keys in the ignition, looked up, ...and, and realized...he was lost. He knew nothing of this new, big city and couldn't even begin to find the police station. So, dressed in his uniform, driving a police car, he trolled the projects, asking and asking what few night-lifers he could spot:

”Hey, can you tell me how to get to the police station?”

“Fuck you! Smart ass, mother-fucker,” was the high-percentage reply.

Eventually an old wino took pity on him and pointed him in the right direction. The old officer was so busy booking the drunk in jail that he barely noticed the long delay of his new, young partner.

Those first days. It's a tough one. All eyes are upon you, both police officers as well as the usual glares and glances from the citizens. I remember my first day, back in 1973 in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. There, all adorned in the Class A Military police uniform of white hat (worn absolutely all of the time) silver medals, training awards, a whistle on a chain, a lanyard from shoulder-to-pistol, a jet black night stick (all chips will be repaired with shoe polish!) In glistening boots and brass buttons, a heavy pistol belt, laden with an "antique" flap holster, handcuffs and magazine case, I was given my very first police assignment. After six months of combat and police training, I was to place my stoic presence at an intersection and guide third-graders across a two-lane residential street at a school crossing. The regular crossing guard were sick. Thrilling, wasn't it? Ohhh, but that's not all!

In a field nearby, two third-graders began fighting. In a flurry of school books and bags and little girls impassioned pleas for help, it was here I began by first official police action. Feeling like a gawky idiot, clutching my bouncing radio and pistol, I clamored and clanged my way to this miniature rumble, and with ropes and chains dangling and hooking little hands and feet, I managed to separate the ruffians. The fight had started over some horrible remark passed at recess. The boys went home and I returned to my important post.

The rest of the day was uneventful, and I wondered, “so, this is it?” But my stay at Ft. Sill wasn't uneventful. Never mind the first day, in the first month. Within that cherry month myself and other units responded to a domestic, a husband beating his wife. When we first arrived on the street he appeared in his doorway, a silhouette under a harsh, white, porch light, raised his right arm and sprayed .45 caliber bullets at us with a Colt pistol. We dove behind our squad cars for cover. I can still hear the harsh thuds as slugs belted into our cars and crackled over our heads. We eventually talked him out of the house and into arrest. It really surprised me to see him the very next month, going about his daily business at a military bank, as though his one night of craziness had never happened. “Hey! That’s the guy who shot at us!” I said to myself. Little did I know that through the years, seeing people I had just arrested later roaming the streets would become the norm.

FT. Sill is a city all unto itself, with stores, churches, homes, apartments, high rises, parks, schools, an airport, clubs, restaurants, etc., and with many things unlike cities, such as barracks, armories, black market and AWOLS and thousands of men, many of the young and stupid. I always say that I "retired" from the army because what they did to me in a few short years made it feel like twenty long ones. As a uniformed M.P., later a plainclothes investigator and a narcotics investigator, I learned a great deal about people, crime and policing - enough to know that part of the job entailed many so-called, routine things like directing traffic, working minor accidents and incidents and yes -crossing school children.

So, when I showed in the early 70s as a rookie in Texas, I arrived with a well-rounded experience. But my first day, or should I say night, on the my Texas police force wasn't without embarrassment. Now, I was the new kid in the "law-west-of-the-Pecos" court -- a yankee from New Jersey, in fact a yankee so close to the symbolic New York City, and one who could actually see New York City itself everyday! Well! I was a yankee-yankee. A double yankee. A human entendre, and as the standard joke runs: you know what a Texan hates: a yankee with a V-haul." I was a double yankee with a Harley Sportster. A dadgum, biker dude, cop and one of these Army hotshots to boot. My reply would alsways be, "Texas by choice, not by accident."

So all eyes and pre-conceived opinions were on me. To make matters worse, I had been issued second-hand uniforms previously used by a officer who had obviously quit the department to join a circus freak show. The waist was too tight, the crotch was too low and the legs too long. With the promise of new, ordered pants on the way, I reported for night shift duty, taking short steps and bending down only long enough to pull my pants up from under by boot heels.

Just a few hours into my first shift, Sgt. Eric Jackson and I were assisting an injured person into Flow Hospitals Emergency Room when a wide, back porch step did me in. The stretch ripped the crotch of my pants from stem to stern. The band aid the nurse offered me was not quite what the doctor ordered this time. I waddled back to the squad car, clutching my crotch in handful of material, and all this well before Michael Jackson and other crotch-clutching rappers were born, I might add. Ushered to the station and after some delicate safety pin work, I was wisely assigned to the front desk and radio for the remainder of the first tour of duty, though sitting was somewhat uncomfortable on all that tension-loaded, pointy metal.

The very next night, in the same week! in this same uniform, repaired and altered, I arrested a murderer at the scene of his crime, a story I have told in these blogs. The "first day blues" disappeared into the serious work of one of the best, most fascinating, interesting and important jobs I think a person can have ... a police officer. Sometimes I loved it, sometimes I hated it, but when you pin that badge on the first day, partner, you'll never be the same again.

Adios Amigos, Hock

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9 January, 2008: Code of the West - As Kindly as his Conduct Would Permit

Mr. and Mrs. History tell us that the Code of Hammurabi, enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi. is one of the earliest and best preserved law codes, created about 1760 BC. Some experts declare that is the first set of recorded laws, inspired and enforced by a Babylonian god - either Marduk or Shamash - if you really must know. There really isn't anything mentioned in history about a code of conduct guiding the law enforcer's actions when performing their duties. Granted, the punishments were swift and steep back then.The witness who testified falsely was slain. If a man built a house badly, and it fell and killed the owner, the builder is was slain. If the owner's son was killed, then the builder's son is slain. Everything was a strict “eye for an eye.” So, perhaps the police of the day had a more free rein in their duties on the dunes.

Each subsequent culture and society, with a few exceptions, evolved with a law code and criminal treatment code. Lets not even get into the Spanish inquisition as an exception. I, like the Founding Fathers of the USA, like my laws a nice safe distance from any and all religions, please. It seems the more civilized the environment, the better the captured criminal was treated. England made great historical headway in organizing law enforcement by way of one Sir Robert Peele. In 1829, he established the Metropolitan Police Force for London (that's why constables are nicknamed 'Bobbies'). Robert Peele developed the Peelian Principles which defined the ethical requirements police officers must follow in order to be effective.

The Peelien Principles are:
1) The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

2) The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

3) Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

4) The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

5) Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

6) Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

7) Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8) Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

9) The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

All this in 1829! There is a reason Sir Peele is still in the Law Enforcement textbooks around the world. I especially get a kick teaching at the Peele Police Academy in London. The British police wonder why the fuss? But they don't seem to realize that their Sir Peele is an international, cop, rock star!

The Peelien Principles carried on somewhat over to the east coast of the United States. As far as the "Code of the West?” In the wild and wooly vigilante Texas and lands west of the Mississippi, USA, one of the first formal codes for sheriffs, marshals, rangers and deputies and their handling of criminals came from a General D. J. Cook of Cook's Rocky Mountain Detective Association, a freelance, volunteer-only group of Colorado troubleshooters, similar in character to the Pinkerton Detective Agency and whose turf extended well beyond Colorado. Cook was a former military veteran, former deputy marshal, county sheriff, and chief of police.

"The main accomplishment of General Cook during his ardous and eventful life was the creation of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association. This was an unofficial and semi-secret organization of sheriffs, police chiefs, and marshals, which for many years continued to provide an invisible interstate network of law-enforcement agencies that went a long way towards combatting the infamies that were certain to occur in states and territories almost totally devoid of organized law enforcement."

In 1882 Cook published a memoir titled:

Hands Up! Or, Twenty Years of Detective Work in the Mountains and on the Plains.The subtitle goes further,

A Condensed Criminal History of the Far West.

(I accidentally found this old, collector's edition in a used boostore in northen California, years before before I knew what I was buying!)

It was either written by Cook himself or he dictated it to another. Although a purported autobiography? The voice of book is entirely in the third person. It seemed to me to be a bit, well, grandoise as third parties might brag about someone else, but the man was famous for capturing or killing some 50 felons of the day, according to newspapers, and records.

Cook devoted most of his life to law enforcement and compiled a set of basic rules in the 1870s and 1880s which became almost a standard guide among Western peace officers. While, it might be categorized as "self-preservation" or early street smarts, it is one of the first recorded western prodeedural standards that would be lost through time unless made popular from the notority of Cook's and his adventures. I am not sure Cook ever heard of Sir Robert Peele, or read the Peelien principles and invented his rules from isolated, whole cloth.

Cook's Law Enforcement Code of the West:

I. Never hit a prisoner over the head with your pistol, because you may afterwards want to use your weapon and find it disabled. Criminals often conceal weapons and sometimes draw one when they are supposed to have been disarmed.

II. Never attempt to make an arrest without being sure of your authority. Either have a warrant or satisfy yourself thoroughly that the man whom you seek to arrest has committed an offense.

III. When you attempt to make an arrest, be on your guard. Give your man no opportunity to draw a pistol. If the man is supposed to be a desperado, have your pistol in your hand or be ready to draw when you make yourself known. If he makes no resistance, there will be no harm done by your precaution. My motto has always been, "It is better to kill two men than to allow one to kill you."

IV. After your prisoner is arrested and disarmed, treat him as a prisoner should be treated-as kindly as his conduct will permit. You will find that if you do not protect your prisoners when they are in your possession, those whom you afterwards attempt to arrest will resist you more fiercely, and if they think they will be badly dealt with after arrest, will be inclined to sell their lives as dearly as possible.

V. Never trust much to the honor of prisoners. Give them no liberties which might endanger your own safety or afford them an opportunity to escape. Nine out of ten of them have no honor.

As popular as Cook was in and of his time, today one needs to be a bit of western lawman, historian to know of him and know his work, as it lays under those pop culture, tumbleweeds of the Earps, The Texas Rangers, Pat Garrett and other lawmen that history and semi-fiction have elevated to the top of the mesa. But some still recall Cook and his agency, like Clive Cussler. His 2007 bestseller western is called “The Chase” and is based on, guess what? A clever and effective detective working for a Denver Detective Agency.

"As kindly as his conduct would permit." Is a great Cook line and quite Peelien actually, in a cowboy kind of way. Rules to treat prisoners as well as our fellow man. Good guys. Bad guys. Crime and justice. Right and wrong. Some things can be framed so simply. Even through time. The human race as a whole, craves and builds law and order and religion. These are codes of the east and the west, and maybe are somewhat different for hemispheres, but are the big, genetic codes that seem essential to the surival of our species.

Adios Amigos, Hock

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6 January, 2008: Staying Alert - The Alert "Needle"
It is quite easy in our classrooms and on our couches to declare to all “stay alert!” and then to Monday-morning quarterback a flawed or failed crime, a raid, or a mission with a synopsis, “well, he failed to stray alert.” But, there are many training issues involved in the simple command of staying alert.

In an effort to promote alertness, Colonel Jeff Cooper created the first, popular color code warning system decades ago. John Dean Cooper of the United States of America, known to his friends as "Jeff", was a Marine Lt. Colonel who served in both World War II and Korea. In 1976, Cooper founded the American Pistol Institute or API. Later this became the Gunsite Training Center in Arizona, training law enforcement and military personnel, as well as law-abiding civilians. He was a war vet, a history instructor, philosopher, adventurer, and author. He was also widely known as "the Gunsite Guru." The Cooper color concept was drummed into my head in police training from the police academies in the early 1970s and later through in- service schools.

Condition White: White is the lowest level of alertness.
Condition Yellow: Relaxed state of general alertness, with no specific focal point.
Condition Orange: This is a heightened state of alertness,
Condition Red: You are ready to fight and may indeed be fighting.

It is not uncommon for lessor gun-gurus to extrapolate and write and rewrite, and over-explain and overemphasize the simple message that Colonel Cooper first designed. Even the United States Department of Homeland Security uses a color code. The scale consists of five color-coded threat levels, which are intended to reflect the probability of a terrorist attack and its potential gravity. The Homeland Security color system is:

Severe (red): severe risk
High (orange): high risk
Elevated (yellow): significant risk
Guarded (blue): general risk
Low (green): low risk

The color concept is common sense to define. But at this point in our American history, facing terrorism, the color code idea was considered by the general public as lame advice, a joke and frequently made fun of in the media. For whatever reasons, you cannot over-emphasize the color code concept anymore. Cooper's idea was a brief overview and outline to get your mind thinking about important categories. It is an primitive, elementary school approach that too many instructors and governments over-use and preach as a biblical tenet or worse - a doctorate thesis. And at this point, it becomes the target of comedians, and a symbol of government incompetence.

It is also very easy to order someone to always stay alert. What color? What level? and for what? Here is the rub. Stay alert at about Levell Blue! What is that? While on-the-look-out for terrorism or crime, most people don’t know what to stay alert for. Specifically. This is the largest complaint of US citizens with the color code terrorist alert chart:

"Will someone tell us who and what we are looking out for?” is the common public cry.

Security expert and best seller, Gaven DeBecker will tell you to trust your gut instinct, as the inert gift of fear will guide you. It is just not that simple. If you strip out all the intriguing adventures and stories out of Debecker’s book you will be left with a boring, basic crime prevention pamphlet at your local police station. The information is the same but Debecker must be credited for making it readable and interesting Its dramatic message may help readers remember the basic pamphlet concept.

Stay alert for what, exactly? The Department of Homeland Security really has little to add beyond what DeBecker’s book said. Their answer is:

“well, you know, look for something suspicious.”

Suspicious? In physical practice the proper training to identify suspicion is nuanced definitive, yet still diverse to cover all crimes. In courts of the world, there are precise legal "tests" and rulings on suspicion. We can get gut instinct suspicions, and that is all well and fine, but this advice does not cover criminal, guerrilla and terrorist methods of operation. The best way is to research and answer questions like these

* Who are the criminals and terrorists?
* How do they select potential targets?
* How do they surveil potential targets?
* How do they stake them out to gather intelligence?
* How do they approach them?
* How do they execute the crime?
* Where do they park their escape vehicles?
* If no method of escape, are they suicide bombers?

The military, police and aware citizenry need to know these things. Else they will not identify the steps and tools of the trade to be alert for. Once trained, the information should imbed into the intellectual or gut reaction systems in your mind.

Can you stay forever alert as these gun-gurus and martial arts experts bark at you to be, and then will blame you for failing to do so should you slip up? The answer is no. You cannot walk through your life in this Condition Red or even Orange most or all of the time. Your nervous system will burn and fry and you will be diagnosed with a hyper vigilant syndrome by psychiatrists.

Hypervigilance is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. For example, a driver who has previously been involved in a car accident may devote so much attention to road conditions and other cars on the road, that he or she does not hear an accompanying passenger while driving. Or, common today, someone is ever on the lookout for attack by criminals or enemy soldiers. Hypervigilance is a state of anxiety that often (and quickly) leads to exhaustion. Simply put, hypervigilance is a way to describe a person in a elevated worried state of fight-or-flight.

One other point on this awareness subject. There are also levels of alert inside the general time period you are alert! How alert are you when you are alert? Does this vatry? This level may change like needle in a polygraph, or one of those “feeling detectors” that pollsters use when tracking the reaction of focus groups to politicians making speeches we have all seen on TV news. Each second the needle moves up or down, drastically or not, but moves as the voter reacts to the spech. These needle movements are a universal reaction for all of us, the soldier, the citizen, the enforcement officer. And maybe its a problem?

In a common altercation there may be multiple, overt or subliminal reasons to think the tension, or the tipping point of the violence is over or diminishing. Our inert “alert needle”- the actual level of alertness or “guard” is lowered slightly. We may not even notice this! In these split seconds citizens, enforcement officers and military units have been suddenly attacked, injured and/or killed at this very "letting guard down" needle point drop.

I have been in probably a couple of thousand or so of these disturbances and altercations as a police officer, and just a few in regular life. Arguments and fights from domestics to car wrecks, road rage, business partners fighting - just a vast variety of people fighting for a vast variety of reasons. Bouncers and security officers see people tanked up on liquor or drugs and also witness this craziness. And we all know by the survival textbook, we should stay 100%, Red-hot vigilant while involved in these things, but it may be hard as the human animal that we are, we are constantly reading and reacting to the situation, second-by-second. There is a rhythum to these things. A beat. A music. And the surprise attack strikes lowers when the "music" lowers, just like a soundtrack at the horror movies. Learn the song.

Inside the battle, Napoleon once remarked said that the most dangerous time on the battlefield was when his troops thought they had just won. The awareness needle drops. The guard drops. In the Samurai spiritual and practical guide, The Hagakure advises, "after the battle, tighten your helmet strap." Or in more modern terms we revert to baseball’s Casey Stengal and worry when exactly does “the fat lady sing?” All in situtaions it ain’t over, till its over, over and over.

“Will someone tell us who and what we are looking out for?”

Yes, I will. You should have a catalog of suspicious things embedded into your brain, beyond simple gut instintics. And, right here on this webpage and in my training seminars. You can best train to avoid all these problems by following my 12 Step Primer and identify those areas in your life when and where you need to on the extra alert. (see the Citizen Self Defense League page for published parts of the 12 Step Program for FREE! Click here ) In fact, this entire 12 step process is really an effort to explain, direct you to, and plan “what to stay alert for!”

Adios Amigos, Hock

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4 January, 2008 Rumors of my Death are Greatly Exaggerated

The TV and movie writers have been on strike for awhile and folks may have wondered where I (and my blog) were last December. Was I on on strike? No. Where was i? I was going to just let this pass right by, but by an odd quirk of fate, a photo of my new Klingon head scar is now on the internet! With the CQC Magazine give-away and the new CQC Dispatches going out, there was a residual amount of searches on my name and people started locating this photo. Ergo the questions to me:

a) do I have brain cancer?
b) how long do I have?
c) was I beaten and cut in a knife fight?

No. No. And no. In December when I returned from Belgium I was whisked into a scheduled surgery to remove a cancer area on/in the left temple of my head. As one imagines - a very touchy spot - blood, nerves, brain goop. Of course this all started out on the skin surface from scorchings since childhood as global warming has been warming the planet and my left temple, for decades..

The surgery was a rather lengthy process which they finished, rested me and then brought me back in as more was discovered near my left eye. This instigated a whole other little, fun, cutting session. They removed about a quarter-sized circle, about an 1/8 of an inch deep. Not a Hellboy hole, but a Frankenstein hole. Then they pulled and sewed me up and I will look like I had a face lift on my left side and my regular old man on the right side. The docs say they got it all, and the current Klingon ridge over my temple with shrink from alien to near human.

Now...looky here, I am not the least bit religious, and I don’t want any prayers, help, hope-you-get-betters, support groups, well-wishings, etc. No flowers, candy. None. (Whiskey? Hmmmm...V.O.!) And, if this photo had not already been on the web, no one would ever know of this. So, spare me all that stuff and save it for the folks connected into all that kind of stuff.

Turned out to be a win-win deal. I beat the little c! (as opposed to the BIG C!) But, now that it is out, I will make my required public service message and say that the doctors think I got this from extensive sun exposure from driving endlessly in detective and patrol cars. I will tell you drivers out there that the sun beats on your face, arm and hand and that is a problem for police, truck drivers, taxi hacks and other steady driver’s. Get that window side at least covered or coated in a good lotion that stops ALL the kinds of evil rays. So there, my public service announcement.

Am I dead? Not hardly. Dying? That'll be the day. Do I look like a half-breed Klingon? For awhile. I will be wearing my cowboy hat more. Doctor's orders.

Adios Amigos, Hock

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2 January, 2008: Touching Hands
There is an old school ku-raty term - “touch hands with the master.” Whether you are drinking sake at the lobby of Mamasan’s or a beer at Billy Bobs, when martial arts people gather and gossip one subject routinely arises - experience. This or that person has done, or not done, this or that. And inside the discussion, the topic of how people were trained is a favorite. Old timers use the phrase “touch hands with the master.” They ask the question, “how much as he touched hands with the master?” Or, “has he ever touched hands with the master?” How much time, if any, has anyone really spent and trained the school’s creator, founder, master? How important is this in the big picture, or is this just sake and beer talk?

The master thing conjures up images of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill climbing the Aztec stairs to train for years with that abusive Kung Fu guy with the three-foot, white beard. Or even Yoda in Star Wars. There is a child-like wonderment about it.

First, I am just not fond of the term master in common martial arts usage. But I have personal problems with ideas of pre-set power titles and automatic respect. That’s just me, a bit on the rebellious side. I hated saluting strangers in the Army. If you call me master, or Guro, or whatever, it will flat embarrass me and I will immediately tell you to call me “Hock.” Hell, I ain’t even a “mister.” Just Hock. I am just a guy who has collected some tricks that some people want to know. We in the SFC use the term master in the same context as the military or police might, such as “master sergeant,’ or “range master.” If you are master, level 10 with us? You are simply a range master of your own range. You run a teaching operation.

Having played this name game, there is a point or two behind the basic discussion. How important is it, that a student teach hands with the head teacher? Can they learn just as well from the down-line, local teachers. Well, I think so! Sometimes maybe even better. It is only when the business claims of who-is-who caretakers and descendants and dynasties are fought for, do the real “touching hands” debates begin. Also people like to play the ”I was closer to him than you were,” blather games.

And there are really other concerns for me. Quality control and personnel control. There are basic, advanced, expert and Level 10 black belt/range masters I have never met out there, all over the planet. People “made” by people I have “made.” And so on. I am supposed to see these people as I travel the world and usually do catch up with them eventually. But as it all grows and grows? These are not new problems. This was kicked over by the monks, and pondered in the Japanese sword schools; worried over in the fencing halls of Europe. I imagine what Ed Parker thought about this in the 1960s? What about all the Koreans who invented these huge business operations.

One solution is to create the annual seminar/gathering and then twist some wrists and hyper-extend some elbows to get people off the couch and attend. Met, Greet. Renew. Touch hands. Sometimes the bigger the organization? Touching hands may only be a handshake and hello. Ed Parker’s son is still busy shaking these new hands to this day. In military and police training, systems require annual or semi-annual certifications, in a way - touching hands to keep “in touch" with the program, the doctrine and its leaders.

Remy Presas had a funny, broken-English way of saying this, “You study to de’ hands of the master.” Remy broke my nose with a stick in my living room at 12:30 am while training one night, back in 1992. I guess you can’t get more touching hands that. And that is still one of my favorite moments in life. Sick ain’t it? But I guess there is some intrinsic, mysterious, almost genetic value to time spent - “touching hands with the master.”

Now, please pass the sake.

Adios Amigos, Hock

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1 January, 2008: Lets Get the Year Started off Just Right!

As of last December in London, the SFC has four new British, Unarmed Combatives Black Belts. After 6 years of work with myself and Joe Hubbard. From left to right these multi--talented roughnecks are:

Alan Cain - British Army and Security Expert

Adam Dollery - Government Police Trainer

Jim Sutherland - Veteran London Police Officer

George Fitzgerald - Sifu & Kung Fu, JKD expert

150 mixed combat scenarios each. Great test guys! In fact it was plain dangerous. How no one got seriously hurt is just a miracle.

Here is Alan Cain at his "day job," in Afghanistan briefing the Duke of Edenburgh on a combat mission.

Adios Amigos, Hock